Our house has a Sky digital dish.

We like the Sky TV planner and the picture quality/reception wher ecompare dto the terrestrial digital box we have.

So my question is.... if we bought a used sky box and plugged it in, would it work as a free-sat system? would we need a card for the box? are boxes and dishes paired?

The dish is just an antenna AFAIK. The card is the key part I believe.

Have a look here http://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk

I picked up a box with a card second hand for £20 and plugged it into a new dish and rigged it up for the caravan. The card is now paired to the box so if you buy second hand make sure it comes with card. There are some channels we can't receive E4 for 1 because afaik the card was last 'in subscription' before it went to being free. HTH

just orderdered myself a the card only for £20 as already have an old sky box and dish. acording to the website you can get 120 tv channels compared to 34 on freeview